


Relinquish

by xworldofartemisx



Category: Given (Anime), Given (Manga)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Depression, Grief, Grieving, Hopeful Ending, Mafuyu-centric, Memories, Metaphors, Romance, Sorrow, i call it a "stylistic choice", letting go, like a bunch of 'em
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:41:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29072721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xworldofartemisx/pseuds/xworldofartemisx
Summary: Even in death, Mafuyu thought with a sudden wave of bitterness, Yuuki managed to make himself the center of their universe, dead, gone and burried, and yet all his friends still orbited around what was left of him, as if the sun had impolded and the planets left behind kept circling the broken shards of it, cold and in the dark.or the one where Mafuyu lets go.
Relationships: Satou Mafuyu & Yoshida Yuuki, Satou Mafuyu/Uenoyama Ritsuka
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	Relinquish

**Author's Note:**

> hi! and if you're the friend i sent this to ;) hello, you get a special shoutout.
> 
> hope you enjoy this as it is 1am and writing it has made me slightly delirious.

_“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” - Steve Maraboli_

Uenoyama would be at his place in an hour.

One look around his room told Mafuyu that was absolutely unacceptable. He made quick work of tossing unnecessary items into random drawers, made his bed, straightened his already neatly placed books, moved the desk lamp an inch to the right and then twisted to the table beside his bed and paused.

Laying face down, there was a photo on it. Mafuyu knew what it was. It had been laying there, facing the surface of the table, for so long he'd almost forgotten its existence.

With shaking fingers and baited breath, Mafuyu, finding the courage somewhere in the urgency of knowing Uenoyama would be there very soon, picked it up and turned it over.

It felt as though someone punched him in the gut and he sat on the ground with a thud, swallowing thickly.

There he was, smiling softly, one eye hidden by his hair. And there was an arm around him, and a grinning face next to him. It was the last photo he'd ever taken of Yuuki. It was only a few hours after it'd been taken that they fought and he'd said – that was the last time he’d seen Yuuki smile.

Staring at it now, Mafuyu wondered how he had never noticed just how jagged and sharp the edge of that smile had always been. It was bright and made Yuuki's features so unfairly handsome but there was danger in the barring of his teeth, like he'd bitten down on something bitter mid-way through smiling.

He never noticed, never, missed so many things. Had there been signs?

Yuuki said so many beautiful things, words that sent shivers down Mafuyu's spine or settled the jittering within his chest with a single whisper. Yuuki wove a world in between them and reality, cocooned them within the safety of a blanket of pretty words and gentle touches. They were stories, fabrications, a neat plotline with little room for error. But Yuuki, ever the tease, cruel even, decided to end their fairytale on a cliffhanger. Mafuyu only wished he would've written the ending down for him to find, scratched into the skin of his back or poured into the notes of one of those songs Mafuyu was never allowed to hear.

Mafuyu had always hated the overly-critical way teachers went about discussing stories. Because the dissecting and the meaning, the finding of subtle undertones and hidden messages, all of it left Mafuyu nauseous and cold. It sucked all life and magic out of the story, leaving him with nothing but words strewn across a page.

It wasn’t the painful words that clawed out of his throat that night upon the stage that made him shiver, cry, that set some part of his caged heart free, but the unadulterated release of noise. The scream. It tore at his vocal chords, pushed all the air from his lungs. Something had eased within his chest at the lack of oxygen and nothing but his own deafening shout around him.

But Mafuyu hadn’t screamed for the boy who cowered in the corner as a shadow of someone he swore he should know curled their fist nor did he scream for the strange creature that held onto a guitar as though it were the curve of someone’s waist. He screamed for Yuuki’s pain that had been passed onto him and not his own, wasn’t sure he’d ever worked far enough through himself to feel his own pain.

Even in death, Mafuyu thought with a sudden wave of bitterness, Yuuki managed to make himself the center of their universe, dead, gone and burried, and yet all his friends still orbited around what was left of him, as if the sun had impolded and the planets left behind kept circling the broken shards of it, cold and in the dark.

It was a nice metaphor and he was inclined to write it down when he paused. He swore he'd write a different song this time. Yuuki had gotten his moment in Mafuyu's spotlight. He didn't need another one.

So he closed the notes app he'd opened.

He put the framed photo into the drawer of his desk, facing down, and he waited for Uenoyama. As he did so, Mafuyu let the echos of his screaming fade away and, with a hitched sigh as his doorbell rang, he let loose that one bit of pain he’d choked down as the crowd cheered, let the small piece of sorrow not his own flutter through the air in the ripple of his breath and then disappear.

**…**

Mafuyu barely remembered the funeral.

He went through the ceremony in mechanical motions, received the condolences without ever once looking up at the person reciting the rehearsed lines that, he thought, did more to ruin the moment than offer any sort of consolation.

His mother hadn’t uttered a single word, not at the funeral, or the ride home, not when he shut the door to his room, locked it, lay on the floor and shut down. He had heard the rustling, knew she was leaning against his door. She didn’t ask to come in. A while later, the silence dragging on for well over an hour, he’d heard her start to cry, a familiar sound that ignited in him some primal need to protect her, shield her from the violent cause of her grief only to realize, clutching at his chest, that it was him she was crying for. It was his fault.

He didn’t open the door.

He saw the face, the caramel eyes and sandy hair. But there was no kindness in that cruel glare, nothing gentle about the wicked twist of his pale lips. Yuuki was atop him, pressing his knees painfully into Mafuyu’s sides, arms pinning him down by the shoulders. He couldn’t breathe but would not be granted the relief of choking to death either. So he floated somewhere in between, wondering if Yuuki had somehow lost his way on his journey to the afterlife and this was indeed him, an angry apparition stuck on earth come to punish Mafuyu for being too late.

Eventually, the demon got tired of pinning him down and chose instead to cling to his shoulders as he trudged through the days in slow motion.

“Will you ever let me go, Yuuki?”

_Did I not promise you, that day I kissed you, that I never would?_

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

He hadn’t, however, promised Mafuyu would not have to be the one to let _him_ go.

**…**

There had been a therapist at some point, who told him he had every right to be angry, that what Yuuki had done was desperate and sad, something he should ultimately not be blamed for, but that Mafuyu still was allowed to be angry, to feel betrayed.

He didn’t have the words in him to explain to her that he wasn’t.

Mafuyu had never been, would never be, angry at Yuuki. He was angry at himself. No. He wished he could be angry at anyone. Because anger burned, anger made you feel something. What was twisting inside Mafuyu? That was utter hopelessness. An ugly beast, no claws or teeth, just Yuuki’s eyes pointed at the ceiling, open but not seeing, and his skin too pale to be anything but dead. It was the sight of him broken, something he’d never allow Mafuyu to see when he was alive. And finding him showed Mafuyu just enough to be able to imagine what Yuuki must’ve looked like at his worst, when he was alone, when he pushed everyone away.

Staring in the mirror later on, he concluded Yuuki must’ve looked a lot like him in that moment, when he’d let go of himself.

**…**

There were times when Mafuyu thought he wanted Yuuki to be here with him right now. Other moments, however, he wished for a time machine so that he may trap himself in a prepetual loop of the past and the warmth of it he hadn’t felt since the beginning of this endless winter.

He did that in the best way he could. Behind a locked door, burrowed beneath a thick blanket, blinds closed, Mafuyu let himself float through the memories. The harm it caused, the gut-wrenching discomfort he’d feel when he reminisced on how Yuuki’s hands felt across his bare skin all the while Uenoyama’s eyes watched from somewhere in the back of his mind, disappointed and betrayed, was a welcome sting to oppose the numbness he felt otherwise.

But he remembered other things too. Things not reserved for lovers but for childhood friends. The ones who’d seen your bruised face but had been far too small to anything but hold your hand. Fortunately, though, you’d been small enough for that to be everything you needed.

Yuuki hadn’t just been his boyfriend. He was everything. The first friend he’d had, ultimately his salvation from that broken place he couldn’t for the life of him remember why he called home. His first ally in a world that seemed to have been fighting against him since the moment he was born, strange and unusal as he was. _No_ , Yuuki would reprimand, _Special. Unique. Different. But never strange or weird, never anything but beautiful._

“Where do you go?”

“Huh?”

“There are moments when you just – you leave. You’re in the room but it’s like you’re not really present. Where do you go?”

Silence.

Mafuyu hated it, hated he was the one causing it, but how could he explain to Uenoyama that there were no words in him, or rather, no strength to say them out loud? Singing was different. It was loud music and an a scream that left him breathless. To scream now? Disrupt this heavy quiet? That was something Mafuyu could not do.

Maybe that made him weak but he’d accepted that a long time ago. That he was small and weird, a strange insignificant creature. He surrounded himself with people like Yuuki and Uenoyama, people who were flames, destructive and wild but warm and beautiful. Mafuyu fed off of that light, tried to use it to suffocate his own darkness. It had yet to prove a succesful strategy at keeping the shadows at bay.

And he realized, maybe for the first time, or maybe it was because he’d gotten brave enough over the past months to finally admit it, that he was using people. He loved Yuuki and he loved Uenoyama but he was also drawn to them in hopes of them fighting off the demons he couldn’t face, demons that went far deeper than death.

Truth be told, Mafuyu’s detachment, his demeanour that could come off as distant and uapproachable, all of that was meant to protect him. Because he knew he couldn’t handle that sort of pain again, his body was making sure he never got to feel anything at all, for the fear of it being taken away.

Uenoyama backtracked, annoyed or just panicked, Mafuyu couldn’t really tell. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Mafuyu looked at Uenoyama. The blue in his eyes was dimmed by the darkness of his room, an endless night sky charged with emotion the likes of which Mafuyu wanted to both shy away from and devour.

He looked and saw someone looking back, felt someone’s hesitant fingers brush through his hair. And maybe the ticking of the clock on the wall behind him was familiar but the eyes before him were so new, wild, unpredictable, but steady with a resolve that could move mountains, would. Would for _him_.

Mafuyu looked at Uenoyama and let go of the fears holding him back.

**…**

The house was as unchanged as Mafuyu had been before Ritsuka found him and shook him awake with a single strum of his guitar.

And Yuuki’s mother was the same too. Pretty, her face stern but kind. She was exactly the same, shielded from the winds that had torn apart Mafuyu’s front, froze him to his core and then shattered it so that it may be made anew. Her eyes widened as if it was the ghost of her son standing before her as she beheld Mafuyu on her doorstep.

“I honestly never expected to see you again.”

Mafuyu recalled something about a right to be angry. And he was. At this woman who didn’t notice, who swallowed her tears and her pride as she handed to Mafuyu what little she had left to remember the boy she couldn’t save, the boy none of them could save but only Mafuyu would carry the guilt of, the others perfectly content to walk away with little more than grief and a few days of mourning.

He shrugged off the case from his back and unzipped it, curled his fingers around the cool neck of the guitar and set it free. For a moment, he let himself just look at it, brush his fingers across the strings that had been replaced twice now. He extended his hand.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ve had this for a long time now.” Mafuyu was speaking. He hadn’t planned to, hadn’t planned much at all when, with Uenoyama’s body pressing into his, warm, trembling and so _alive_ , he’d glanced at the corner of the room and for the first time saw nothing but an intruder, someone lingering who should not be here. Someone whose departure was long overdue.

The following morning he’d grabbed the guitar while Uenoyama was still asleep and all but ran. And now he was here. Talking. Feeling. Because Mafuyu was so angry.

“I’ve had this for some time now.” He repeated, “and for a while I refused to let go of it, slept with it, carried it with me wherever I went. I thought if I lost sight of it for even second I might lose what little comfort I had in the lingering smell of it or the pen left in the bag as well as the pack of gum.” Yuuki’s mother was staring at him, standing unnaturally still, frozen. “I even learned to play on it. I sang with it. Broke it. Fixed it. Well, someone else fixed it for me. I had thanked that person for fixing my strings not even realizing I’d started to confuse this guitar for something that was mine to own. I thought it belonged to me along with everything that came with it.”

“Mafuyu.” She breathed his name and he was certain she didn’t even comprehend she’d uttered it, uttered a different name when he pressed the guitar into her palms. “Yuuki.”

The anger burned, lit a fire within him, filled his lungs with air to urge the flames. “Say his name. Repeat it. You told me that day that I might want the guitar to remember him by. But I think it’s you who needs the reminder because I will never forget Yuuki. No matter what he’d thought and said, no matter what you did, how much you gave up in order to absolve yourself of the guilt, I will not forget him because I refuse to. But that doesn’t mean I have to bring him back, keep dragging him around with me so that I may look at his face whenever it begins to fade from memory. I can remember him even when he’s not here.” His breathing grew ragged, something kicked and cheered and wept within him, “So take the guitar. Yuuki’s memory is not in it. No, I took that with me and will always keep it safe. Take it.”

He turned on his heel and left without a goodbye. No, not without a goodbye, because as he turned he caught a glimpse of sandy blonde hair and brilliant eyes. Yuuki’s smile was gentle. “Goodbye, Yuuki.”

_Thank you for letting me go._

**Author's Note:**

> any feedback is appriceated. hope you liked this!  
> you can expect more given content from me coming soon as my adhd has decided to make this my new hyperfixation.  
> next up: some fluff to mend any wounds i might have caused with this one


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